Most every consumer products, food products, raw materials, or other packaged goods at one (1) time or another are transported on a shipping pallet. The ubiquitous shipping pallet provides an easy, low cost, and very flexible means to move packaged goods, heavy equipment and large groupings of materials quickly and efficiently.
Because of their myriad uses and efficiency shipping pallets can be moved by lift trucks, tow motors, and specialized pallet conveyances. However, in stores, smaller warehouse spaces, and other relatively confined areas shipping pallets are usually moved by a pallet jack.
A pallet jack is a rather specialized piece of machinery having a set of wheels, a set of arms for mating with a shipping pallet, and a lifting mechanism for lifting the arms. An operator positions the pallet jack with the arms lowered and inserted into a shipping pallet. The arms are raised, which raises the shipping pallet and the material carried on the shipping pallet. The pallet jack is then moved to another location using the wheels. The arms are then lowered, the shipping pallet is placed on the floor, and the pallet jack is then removed from the shipping pallet. Often pallet jacks are hydraulically or pneumatically operated so as to enable one person to move a great deal of material, sometimes thousands of pounds at a time, with little effort or risk of injury.
One of the relatively few drawbacks of pallet jacks is that a pallet jack can easily weigh several hundred pounds. This makes them rather difficult to move from one (1) location to a remote location. This is a particular problem when one (1) pallet jack must be frequently moved. If the pallet jack is not at the correctly location the delivery personnel who relied on it may have to move delivered goods one (1) piece at a time. Often a difficult, time consuming, and dangerous task.
In view of the foregoing there exists a need for a lightweight, easily transportable pallet jack. Beneficially such a pallet jack would be strong enough to move a great deal of weight while remaining easy to relocate. Preferably such a pallet jack would be made of aluminum for strength and lightweight. Ideally such a strong, lightweight pallet jack would eliminate the need for a pallet jack at the receiving location since delivery workers could simply bring their own. To that end such a pallet jack would ideally have foldable skid arms that can adjust to varying widths to fit pallets of different sizes. Beneficially the skid arms of such a pallet jack would fold up out of the way and would remain upright and out of the way when being moved.